ANNUAL STUDY MISSION OF NEWSPAPER ASSN.
By Bob Van Leer

  (OSAKA, JAPAN, Oct. 6, 1991) - Betty and I started yesterday from Medford to join the annual Study Mission of the National Newspaper Association, this year in China. But our first overnight stop is here in Japan.

  We are actually still operating on Saturday, the same day we started from Medford. Crossing the Pacific, we crossed the international dateline where we lost a day. Suddenly, instead of it being Saturday, it was Sunday.

  In actual elapsed time we have now been on the road about 26 hours but it is only 11 p.m. Here. Now we have to get accustomed to local time and get over "jet lag".

  Friday evening we drove over Bear Camp and stayed in Medford Friday night to catch a 7 a.m. flight from Medford.

  Our flight went by way of San Fransisco where we changed planes for the next leg to Los Angeles.

  There we joined our newspaper party, or actually half of it. A total of 28 are on the tour but half left from Chicago and we joined up with them in Tokyo.

Long Flight

  Two of the 28, a couple from North Carolina, missed the Chicago flight and will join us in Shanghai. At Los Angeles we boarded a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 for the 11 hour, 10 minute flight to Tokyo.

  We have been on longer flights (LA to Sydney, Australia, and New York to Johannesburg, South Africa), but not much longer. A half a day in an airplane seat gets pretty wearing. Walking around the cabin helps a little but there is not much walking around room.

  Japan Air Line treats its passengers well. Stewardesses all appear to be about 20 years old and look like dolls, but very competent dolls.

  The flight from LA to Tokyo took us over Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which makes sense if you look at it on a globe instead of a flat map.

  At Tokyo's Narita airport we joined the rest of our party and boarded another Boeing 747 for the 55 minute flight to Osaka. This is a busy corridor, the 747 was filled.

Osaka Major City

  From the airport at Osaka we boarded a bus to our downtown hotel, a 45 minute ride. Osaka is one of the major cities of the world with a population over 5 million.

  The ride from the airport downtown was over a route ablaze with neon billboards, brighter lights than Las Vegas. Energy conservation hasn't caught on yet here.

  However wasteful of energy, the drive is spectacular. This is a prosperous city in a prosperous country. Japan is the prime example of people being what's the most important.

  This is a small country. The land area is only about 4 percent of the United States. But it is densely populated with a population about half of the U.S.

  These people on these crowded islands lacking in resources are giving the rest of the world fits. Japanese produce more and better at reduced prices.

  English is creeping into Japan. Many of the neon billboards are partially in English and the freeway has signs in English as well as Japanese.

  Tomorrow JAL will take us on a short commuter hop to Shanghai where our China tour will begin.